Update: I was unfortunately not aware of Shamus Young's severe criticism of Fallout 3 available here to link in the original piece and I regret that. It dovetails rather nicely with what I've written and it's much better executed than my piece. I strongly recommend anyone...

So, you've heard about Halo 2? Really? That's hard to believe, I mean it's only been on the
news section of every gaming site for the last few years. This, by far, is the most hyped game
I have seen before. Although this game didn't live up to 100% of the hype, it sure came pretty
dang close.

Now, what do you think of when you say "first person shooter"? Yes, you think, "quake",
"unreal", or even "doom". But, console shooters were so far out of the spectrum until bungie
found something that worked on an xbox controller. That game was Halo: Combat Evolved.
From Halo to Halo 2, the controls were basically unchanged, except for a ome important
thing: Dual-Weilding. Which, in short, is when you hold two weapons at once. Yeah, two.
TWO! Holy crap! What the!? Uh, huh, two. It's very well done, every weapon works well
together, but my personal favorite is the sub-machine gun and the pistol. If you get headshots
with the pistol and lay waste to them with rapid bullets with the machine gun, they'll be gone
within seconds.

Enough about the controls, this is where the real meat and potatoes is. The campaign. While
it doesn't offer "everything" "anyone", could "ever" want. It sure is enough fun and complexity
to last you quite some time. And by all means, it lives up to the last halo tri-fold. I couldn't,
personally, have wanted more. Even the super-secret cliffhanger ending was more satisfying
than the "this is the end, OR IS IT!?!?!" ending from the first halo, I mean, it may have not
solved any parts of the storyline, but really, it's too enticing during the game to even care at all
about the menial complaints with the ending.

Luckily there's so much more, that you'll never even need to touch this mode of gameplay. My
personal favorite game mode is "slayer", which is deathmatch, plain and simple. You run,
shoot, and kill, at will. No catches whatsoever. There's juggernaut, which is the converse of
your favorite playground kiddie game: "tag". In this game, you are actually "trying" to get "it".
Why? Because it makes you all 'roided up and ready to kill. You become super strong, and it
takes basically the rest of the players to take you down at some points. FUN, FUN, FUN, at
least for the person that gets to kill, kill, kill *cough*.

So, yeah, Halo 2 has everything could ever want, a perfect killing simulator....wait, no...
Scratch that, it's the perfect game to either play alone, or play with friends, on or offline

While all these already awesome features weren't enough, bungie has released downloadable content such as maps, gameplay updates, and matchmaking playlists.